Audio-video image information (A/V) content is digitized to reduce quality degradation and mass-duplicated in digital form for consumer use by end users. However, the digital copies are vulnerable to mass distribution of bootleg copies, thereby violating the content owner's copyright rights. Moreover, the bootleg copies are nearly impossible to trace to the copyright infringer.
High value A/V content such as movies and music is encrypted to prevent unauthorized access. High value A/V content can be presented in analog form and encrypted/decrypted in a protected single package integrated circuit system to preclude snooping attacks on unprotected A/V data streams. However, managing the analog signals is inconvenient.
High value A/V content is often provided to end users as digitized encrypted content in a storage device such as a disk drive. Thereafter, the storage device decrypts the encrypted content into unprotected decrypted content for the end user. However, there is no way to identify and trace the particular storage device that decrypts the encrypted content, particularly if the decrypted content is used illicitly to generate bootleg copies.
There is a need for tracking copies of content distributed to end users from a storage device. There is also a need for identifying the storage device from which a copy of the content is made. There is also a need for providing content owners with a traceable form of the content and with identification of the storage device that furnishes bootleg copies of the content.